Wild and Free

(Mason’s POV)

“She lied to me,” I cursed, chucking my bloodied shirt into the trash can. “She fucking lied to all of us!”

“Mason-” Riley tried.

“We’ve been fooled for months, thinking that all she was was human, just like the rest of the people in this stupid town,” I cut him off. “All of my thoughts, assumptions, unvoiced accusations, everything that I’d ever believed about her was fake.”

We were all in my room not long after we arrived back at the pack grounds. Selene and Diana were with us, the only two that I allowed to come to tend to our wounds.

My sister came towards me, limping because of a bandage on her foot, “May, you need to calm down. We have to talk about all this, get their side of the story.”

“She’s a fucking werewolf, Kenz! How can I just be calm. God and it was right in front of our faces this entire time,” I ignored her. “And to make things all the more worse, not only did she have to be a werewolf but she had to be the black she-wolf! The one that attacked us in the freaking woods! And the one that had something to do with your brother and Chris going missing,” I reminded Riley.

“Hey don’t go accusing her of things you don’t know anything about,” Kenzie scolded. “I saw that letter and everyone heard what the boys said. “Rio” or Auden or whoever, saved them and took care of them. How many rogues do you know who would do the same?”

I sighed, rubbing my face and wincing when I touched the various cuts and bruises.

I look in the mirror on the wall and assessed the damage that had been done to my body during the fight.

The bite on my leg had started and stopped bleeding a couple of times so there was both dried and fresh blood running down the side of my calf. I had a big black bruise covering my left eye and the cut on my lip ached whenever I spoke. With my shirt off I saw at least two big bruises and a long cut on my stomach from the Blonde warrior’s punches.

The most sickening part though was the area around my ribs. The skin wasn’t broken or anything so that was good but the positives ended there. The skin was discolored, but not like any normal bruise. That was how i knew something was wrong. It bloomed pink, red, and purple over the area that hurt the most. Whenever I inhaled it felt as if someone was playing my ribs like a xylophone with a hammer.

“Mason will you please let me patch you up? Your healing won’t help you at all if your wounds aren’t cared for properly.” Diana asked where she sat next to Holden who was laid on my bed. She gave me a pointed look in the mirror from behind me.

I opened my mouth to protest but another glance at my reflection told me that I needed to listen to her.

I turned around and nodded, sitting down on a stool that Kenzie brought over from the corner of the room.

Diana patched up the last wound on Holden’s chest before coming to me.

Holden and Greyson were definitely hit the worst out of our group. The guy’s claws had dug deep into the human’s shoulder and he’d lost a lot of blood. Greyson’s ankle was fractured in three places. He’d told us that one of the grey wolves deliberately stomped on his ankle and it buckled, that was when he knew it was bad. With both of those big things added on top of the two’s various cuts and bruises, they’d be in pain for a while.

I felt worse for Holden though because, even with the help of a little witchcraft healing, his wounds would take a lot longer to heal than Greyson’s or any of the rest of us.

Overall though I should’ve been grateful that we were all still alive, even if Auden was locked away somewhere horrible.

My father wouldn’t tell me where she was. In all the time we’d lived there since the move, I was never informed of where we kept prisoners. One would normally think that was a good thing, as there was never a need to store them. But at that point I really wished I’d been curious.

I was trying to remember how badly she’d been hurt before she was taken away. She’d been scratched pretty badly but that was everything that I saw. If there was anything else, she didn’t show it. So that either meant she was being normal Auden and covering it up, or she fought so well that there really was nothing else. Both options were highly possible.

“So all the commotion going on outside,” Selene started, “it’s all about some fight with another pack?”

Kenzie nodded and the nurse’s eyebrows knit in confusion, “I didn’t think there was any packs within miles of our lands.”

“There aren’t,” I spat while Diana put some sort of cream on my ribs band bandaging them tightly making me hiss in pain.

My sister sighed, “It was a group of rogues and an egotistical bastard who liked to play pretend and act like he was a real Alpha with a real pack.”

“Wow,” she remarked. “Looks like they put up quite a fight either way.”

I rolled my eyes, “Only if you pretend that they didn’t have triple our numbers and fought fair.”

Diana glared at me for talking as she tried to wipe the blood off my face.

“I didn’t hear anything about a fight,” Diana said, turning our heads towards her. “When I got the call to send medical supplies to the pack lobby where trucks waited, they never told me why. No message has been sent to the pack so everyone is just confused.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

She shrugged, “Even coming here, all anyone could talk about was some sort of rogue that was arrested.”

Everyone was silent. It was something that none of us had even considered her as since we found out. Sure she was a werewolf like me and Riley and Kenzie and Greyson, and sure she didn’t wasn’t with a pack, but I guess it just never registered in our minds that she was a rogue.

Cassie stood up from the couch, “I can’t, I’m sorry,” she choked out, covering her mouth to muffle a sob and rushing from the room. Riley, who was getting the bite on his bicep cleaned, got up too, following his mate despite Selene’s protests.

Diana turned to Holden who stared at the door, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head.

“Why is she so upset?” Selene asked.

Kenzie looked at the floor, “You remember Auden right?”

I don’t know why but just saying her name made me shift. Whether it was because of what happened, or something else, I didn’t know.

Selene and Diana nodded, “The girl that came in with the glass,” Selene remembered.

“Well, it was her,” Kenz replied. “She was the rogue they arrested.”

Both women’s mouths fell agape, “That doesn’t make any sense, we would’ve known the day she came in,” Diana said.

“How do you think we feel? We’ve been friends with her for months and haven’t had a clue,” Greyson said bitterly.

“I don’t get it, how did you not know if she was with you the whole time?”

We all fell silent again, looking toward Holden for that answer.

He just shook his head, “It’s not mine to tell, I’m sorry,” he apologized. Kenzie squeezed his hand. “All I’ll say is that she had something that helped her stay hidden.”

I opened my mouth to ask him to elaborate but the door opening stopped me.

Cassie and Riley walked in and sat back down quietly. Selene resumed her work on Riley’s bite.

“Do you have any idea how she stayed hidden this whole time?” I asked her.

Something seemed to change in her eyes and she glanced at Holden for a second before putting her hand in her pocket. She pulled out something and only when she dangled it in the air did I realize what it was.

“The necklace?” Kenzie asked.

Cassie nodded, standing up and walking over to me. She held out the necklace to me, “She asked me to give it to you.”

I knit my brows, carefully taking the chain from her hands, “Why? Did she say anything else?”

Cassie nodded, “She wanted me to tell you that she’s sorry.”

I looked down at the necklace, studying it closely.

It wasn’t anything extremely special at first glance. Maybe iron, not silver because it didn’t burn my touch. The backward crescent had always intrigued me but after our first meeting I never really asked about it. It was decorated with little onyx colored jewels.

“So this is what she used to stay hidden?” I asked Cassie and Holden to which they nodded. “But it’s just a necklace, I don’t understand.”

Cassie shrugged, “She said that it was the only valuable thing her parents ever gave her. I guess i has some sort of enchantment on it.”

“Let me put it on,” Kenzie said, holding out her hand.

I handed my twin the necklace and she clasped it around her neck.

She had it on for two seconds before her brown eyes widened and she took it right back off. Her head turned to look at Cassie and Holden, “You’re saying she wore that the entire time we’ve known her?”

The nodded, “And before. All day everyday,” Holden told her.

“What is it?” I asked Kenzie.

She handed the necklace back to me, “Those jewels, they’re Razalea stones.”

Diana and Selene gasped, “How the hell did they even find those?” Diana asked, grabbing the necklace and looking for herself.

Cassie shrugged, “Like she said, the only valuable thing her parents ever gave her.”

“What’s rose leah stone?” Greyson asked.

“It’s Razalea stone,” Diana corrected. “It’s a really rare mineral. Strange too I’ll add. It has the power to mask any creature’s scent, and various other traits.”

“Why is that strange?”

“Because it also weakens one’s power,” she explained further. “It doesn’t change a creature and isn’t nearly as painful as Colt Stone but it basically sucks the life right from you. Wear that thing enough and your wolf would be extremely weak. I can’t imagine the pain that that girl has been in wearing that for so long.”

“She never seemed like she was in pain,” Riley said.

I laughed a bitter laugh, “Never does.”

“Nevertheless. I wonder where her parents got it,” Diana said, studying the necklace again. “Couldn’t you ask them?” She looked up at me.

I shook my head, “She told us that her parents abandoned her when she was sixteen,” I looked over at Cassie and Holden. “But I suppose she could have lied to us in more ways than one.”

Cassie glared at me, “You have no idea what Auden has been through,” she fumed. You wouldn’t think that such a small girl would look so intimidating.

“You’re right, I have no idea. Because she lied to us. Sorry that I’m a little mad that my m-” I cut myself off.

Everyone was looking at me.

I shook my head and stood up from the stool, grabbing a shirt from the closet. I hid a wince as I slipped in on and then left the room.

My only thought was that I had to find her. There were too many thoughts and questions running through my head for me to just wait for my father to come and find me with some sort of decision on what was going to happen. I needed to talk to her.

~*~

I weighed all the options in my mind to where they could have been keeping her. It had to be in some sort of cell. Based off of how they treated her while taking her from the battlefield, they saw her as some sort of criminal and were treating her like a prisoner.

Where would I keep a prisoner?

My father commanded his men to take her to the cells which wasn’t helpful because I had no idea where those were. The most logical place would be underground and I’ll be damned if my father wasn’t a logical person. The only place I knew that had stairs that went down was the armory. It was a stone building that we kept a lot of training supplies and weapons when we weren’t using them.

I exited the pack house and walked through the courtyard to get to the building.

Outside was a mob scene despite the fact that all training sessions had been canceled for the day. There were still trucks in the lot with men bustling around them. I didn’t know where they had taken all the rest of the grey wolves that hadn’t died in the battle. But I was sure my father had been interrogating them, digging into their minds to find out more about their pack.

There were a lot of pack members that had gathered and were staring at the production in confusion. A few were even trying to get answers out of Olivia, my father’s assistant, who was giving orders to the various workers on what to do.

I tried to sneak past her by covering my face, but when my name was called out I knew I’d been busted.

“Mason!” She yelled before I heard her approaching. “Alpha Mason, your father wanted me to inform you that he is dealing with that menace Orion and that there is going to be a pack wide announcement later about everything going on.”

I mentally breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t trying to tell me that my father wanted me to stay inside or something. I nodded and thanked her before she went back to her duties.

I managed to make it past the crowds and around to the side of the armory without being seen by anyone else. The last thing I wanted in that moment was to get bombarded by a bunch of pack members who wanted to know what was going on. They just needed to get that announcement out fast.

The door of the building closed behind me with a loud clang, making me flinch. I’d only ever been in there a few times since our arrival when they needed help with gathering training gear. Never had I questioned what the stairs just inside the door lead to. But at that moment, they were my only clue.

I thought that one or maybe even two flights of stairs was a bit excessive as they would have had to do some major work to construct that far down. But when I got to the fourth flight I was a bit suspicious.

At the bottom of the steps, when it didn’t go down any further, I was met with a pair of men posted and the start of a long hallway.

They stood up and straightened their backs, “Alpha Mason,” they addressed me formally. I held back an eye roll. Both of them were my age and I’d trained with them before.

“I’m here to speak to a- prisoner- that my father admitted here earlier today,” I told them, choking over the word that I still did not think fit the situation.

“We’re afraid that we’ve been told not to let anyone down there,” One of them said.

I sighed running, “Come on Zack,” I said, “We’ve known each other since we started training. You know I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important,” I told him, trying not to sound as angry and eager as I was but at the same time, get my point across.

Zack looked at the other guy, Marcus, presumably having an exchange over mindlink. Then he turned back to me, “I don’t know if you want to go down there,” Marcus said.

I knit my brows, “Wh-What? Why? Did they do something to her?”

“She was beaten when they brought her here,” Zack clarified. “He just means that it’s not really a pretty sight down there.”

I shook my head confused, and pushed past them.

“Last door, you’ll know it when you see it,” Zack yelled from behind me, but I didn’t need his direction. I knew exactly how to find her.

~~AUTHOR’S NOTE~~

bgjrleabrgileaugibraehlruieaobguriea HE ALMOST SAID IT UGH.

Hope you enjoyed!

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~ your Cheshire Cat loving friend